Tulip’s moved home

It was always planned that Tulip was going to move into Sugar, Pearl, Smudge and Muffin’s cage, but we wanted to wait a few weeks to be on the safe side. Not only would this be quarantine time, but also it was also meant to give us time to get to know her.

However, Tulip had other ideas and she managed to chew a hole in her water bottle. The bottle was on the outside of the cage, but Tulip is fairly small and the bars were obviously wide enough for her to get her nose out. She chewed quite a large hole in the bottom of the bottle, causing it to leak in her cage. I was already quite frazzled with all the worry about one of my rat boys, Pepper. So, rather than just clean her wet cage out and give her a new bottle, I picked her up and plopped her in with the other girls. There was a bit of scuffling at first, but then it all settled down and everyone found their own place to sleep. Tupil’s was high up in a plastic tunnel.

It is obvious Tulip hasn’t been handled, or let out to run around, very much at all before she joined our family. She isn’t very good at jumping and her run is more of a waddle. I’m hoping that having a new rattie family will encourage her to explore and build up some confidence when out and about.

She does nip us and squeak when we pick her up, but that is more warning than aggression. We feel very positive that she is going to settle in well and have, and be, lots of rattie fun.

There are no photos of our new little girl just yet, she is so jumpy and gets very nervous when we try to hold the camera near her. We will keep trying and fingers crossed we’ll get some lovely pictures of our pretty little girl soon.